Thursdays Fracking Assignment

EPA: Natural Gas Fracking Article Response

            The EPA released a report on December 9, 2011, about the effects of natural gas fracking in the town of Pavillion, Wyoming. Hydraulic fracturing, of fracking for short, is the process in which people drill for natural gas. It has been thought in the past that fracking was safe for many reasons. Fluids should have been forced down, not up, the layers of rock should’ve formed a watertight seal preventing chemicals to move up, and that the pollution of wells wasn’t related to fracking. However, it is now being said that those statements are not true, and the chemicals used in the fracking process are finding their way into drinking water.

            There are some opponents to this theory that fracking is dangerous though. Not surprisingly, the company who owns the wells in Pavillion is speaking out against the EPA investigation. EnCana spokesperson Doug Hock says that the company is not to blame, and says that “Nothing EPA presented suggests anything has changed since August of last year--the science remains inconclusive in terms of data, impact, and source." Of course, it is expected that the company would try to defend themselves, seeing how these accusations from the EPA will be pretty bad for business. Hock isn’t the only opponent though. Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma said that the agencies report was offensive. Inhofe’s office also accused the EPA of being biased last year when looking into Wyoming.

            Regardless of who’s to blame, water is still being polluted. The EPA has been monitoring the water for a while now, and has found a few pollutants in drinking water. Some of these chemicals can cause cancer such as benzene, and others are known to be used in fracking such as Butoxyethanol. These chemicals need to be removed from people’s drinking water before something happens to them. Rather or not fracking is the reason for this is irrelevant for now, people need some safe water to drink and then we can worry about pointing fingers.

Visual Rhetoric Image

I think this is a good example of visual rhetoric because it shows who all is under the water when it is polluted. This image puts in context how when oil, for example, is spilled in the ocean it goes directly onto the animals who live beneath the surface. I think often times people picture these coral reefs as beautiful places that need to be protected and when people think of oil spills in the ocean they just think about big open spaces of water were nothing is really effected. The fast of the matter is however that lots of species are effected by pollution.

Response to classroom discussion

Today in class we discussed Richard Kahn's "Towards Ecopedagogy." In the article, he definitely presented
some interesting statistics. For example, 3 billion people live on less than $2 per day, and 1.2 billion live on
less than $1. There is a lot in the article about how capitalism is designed so that the rich get richer and the
poor get poorer. Kahn's main problem was with the educational system. He says that the educational system
isn't broken, it was just designed to control people. People will only go so far based on the schools they go
to, and the elite of society are "better" because they go to more expensive schools. I don't know if I really
agree with all of this though. A degree is only as good as you make it in my opinion. For example, lets look
at two theoretical people, Bob and Joe. Bob was born into a very wealthy family. He got to go to private
school for grade school and Duke for college because his parents were able to afford it and make some
donations along the way. Bob finished towards the bottom of his class in business school, and now has a
decent salary, along with the money he still receives from his parents. Joe however was born into a poor
family. He worked his butt off through the public school system, and eventually went to NC State on
scholarship. He graduated top of his class, and went on to start his own business. Joe spent all of his time
working to make his company succeed, often upwards of 70 hours per week for the first few years.
Eventually, his business took off and is now making several million dollars per year. According to the system
Kahn describes this can't happen, but it does. Sure, the wealthier you are the more advantages you have, but
that's not the system that's just nature. I think that a person's success is a reflection of primarily how hard
they work, not the system.

Themes in Turtle Island

There are several poems in the book Turtle Island. Most of them are about the environment, and what needs to be done to save it. This is my attempt to discover some of the themes within these poems.

Front Lines: This poem is about how America is growing so fast, and trying to build and urbanize everywhere that we can. Snyder says that we need to “draw our line” so that the urbanization will stop. We need to be on the front lines of this battle against urbanization.

“One Should Not Talk to a Skilled Hunter about What is Forbidden by the Buddha” – Hsiang-yen: In this poem, a gray fox is being skinned and cleaned. When they get to the contents of the stomach, they find a squirrel. Inside the squirrel, they find a piece of aluminum foil. The theme of this poem is that pollution might not affect everything directly, but it does affect everything on the planet in some way or another.

For the Children: This poem talks about how civilization is going up, but headed down at the same time. It’s saying that civilization is kind of peaking and headed towards a crash. However, it mentions how people say that the future will be ok for our children if they can get there. The theme is that society just assumes there will be a future no matter how badly we treat the earth.